“More on why we must save the US Post Office!
~Hazel Henderson, Editor“
EXPLAINER
The tumultuous history of the U.S. Postal Service—and its constant fight for survival
The agency has shape-shifted to overcome crises for more than two and a half centuries—and emerged as the nation’s most trusted institution.
BY BOYCE UPHOLT
PUBLISHED MAY 18, 2020
In 1914, John and Sarah Pierstorff didn’t want to pay for a pricy train ticket to send their daughter across Idaho. Instead they affixed 53 cents in stamps to her winter coat. Charlotte May Pierstorff, who was five years old, rode in the train’s mail compartment, and was handed off to her grandmother by a postal clerk.
Americans had just embraced the latest innovation from what was then called The United States Post Office Department: for the first time, letter carriers were carrying packages too. Several families apparently decided this was a good way to transport children. The Postmaster General received a letter in 1913 inquiring about the appropriate way to wrap a baby; the customer noted that the Post Office was more trustworthy than the privately owned companies it competed against, which would be too “rough in handling.”
The U.S. Post Office Department launched airmail service in 1918. In this photo taken a year later, employees deliver a woman who traveled as cargo to San Diego, California. Later regulations prohibited sending people through the mail.
Over the course of more than 250 years, the U.S. Postal Service has gone through many shifts to keep up with technology and culture—including switching its focus from newspapers to letters to package delivery service. That flexibility has kept the institution relevant and solvent in the face of change.
Now the postal service faces what may be an existential crisis: The coronavirus has sent the nation’s already-declining mail volume into a new nadir. The U.S. House of Representatives Oversight committee recently warned the service might have to cease operations by June. In a joint statement, committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney and Representative Gerry Connolly, who chairs the subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service, urged their colleagues to intervene. “Every community in America relies on the Postal Service to deliver vital goods and services, including life-saving medications,” they said. “The Postal Service needs America’s help, and we must answer this call.”
There are ideas to save the Postal Service. Some suggest it could turn to banking or providing rural broadband internet connections. Others think mail carriers could offer essential government services to the people who live along their routes—a role they say mail carriers are uniquely suited to fill. After all, even if they’re no longer sending their children through the mail, Americans still trust the U.S. Postal Service, which consistently ranks as their favorite government agency in both Pew and Gallup polls.